weird cartridge

[khryssun]

Strange thing happens with the 32 in 1 cartridge I've just received.

 

All the games work perfectly except 4 ones :

- Space Jockey

- Fishing Derby (Crabs version)

- Boxing

- Fishing Derby (Normal version)

 

These games are displayed with the normal colors as long as I don't start the game but they turn to black and white mode when I activate the "Game Reset" Button (or the fire button for Space Jockey).

 

What's that ?

Did Anyone encouter a such problem ?

Any help/info is welcome.

(I have no problems with my other cartridges).

 

Thanks

[khryssun]

Eckhard,

 

Thank you very much for your explanations

 

quote:

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Originally posted by Eckhard

Is this on a PAL or a SECAM system?

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I played on my SECAM system (This is the only system I own). Regarding the Stella manual it seems normal it works like a PAL VCS because if i'm not wrong the SECAM version is a kinda hacked PAL VCS.

 

 

quote:

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Originally posted by Eckhard

The boxing game in the 32-in-1 cartridge even switches between colour and no colour depending on the boxer's positions.

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That's exactly what happens with my system... The same thing occurs with Fishing Derby depending the position of the shark/fishes.

 

 

quote:

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Originally posted by Eckhard

Do we need to add this effect to the SECAM emulation too now?

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It seems you may

 

 

BTW

Regarding the SECAM palette color, I noticed other strange things using some of the new games I received (PAL and NTSC). I have to compile these infos... I'll posted my remarks when it's done.

 

I think the Stella Manual is incomplete about the SECAM specifications.

I wondering if more than 8 levels of luminance aren't used to produce the SECAM palette (in fact, maybe a combination between the 16 color values and the 8 luminance values used by the Color Luminance Registers).

If not, an other factor must modify this 8 colors palette.

 

I'll let you know my observations...

 

Thanks again

[Eckhard Stolberg]

Is this on a PAL or a SECAM system? On a PAL system this is normal behaviour for this cart. Due to the way how colours are encoded in the PAL VCS a game will not display any colours, if it does an odd number of scanlines per frame. Unfortunately most non-Atari games on the 32-in-1 cart seem to be NTSC versions that were badly hacked to meet the PAL specifications in the VCS programmers guide without actually having been tested on a real PAL VCS. Other NTSC games like Combat also don't show colours when played on a PAL VCS. The boxing game in the 32-in-1 cartridge even switches between colour and no colour depending on the boxer's positions. Z26 simulates this behaviour with the -o command line switch.

If you have the 32-in-1 ROM image split up into individual 2K files, you can try it out yourself. Do we need to add this effect to the SECAM emulation too now?

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg